


Feed on You? Oh, We've Just Met.

by cornsmut



Category: Alice Isn't Dead (Podcast)
Genre: Cannibalism, Cunnilingus, Explicit Sexual Fantasies, F/F, Fan Novelization, f/f - Freeform, hunger and Thirst, man eating lesbians, violence against tourists and police, with apologies to Joseph Fink
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-18
Updated: 2018-07-02
Packaged: 2019-02-16 07:52:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 14,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13049736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cornsmut/pseuds/cornsmut
Summary: A fan novelization of Season 2, from the other narrator's perspective.  The Police Instigator is very good at her job, and job satisfaction is high.  She was expecting to enjoy herself when she recieved the assignment to hunt Keisha; she was expecting prey drive.  But she wasn't expecting it quite like this.





	1. Montana

Hello. I don’t believe we’ve met. You’d know if you’d met me. You wouldn’t know for long, but it would be memorable. 

First time I saw her was in that gift shop. Perhaps. I can’t be expected to remember everyone I’ve ever met, not when only a few of them will prove to be useful, or even interesting. She wasn’t interesting, I don’t mind admitting that. Oh, I knew what she’d done. I knew she was important enough for them to set me on her trail. For them to set up their ruses and their games and take pains to confuse her. _Love_ confusion, I’ve mentioned that.

But she was just another person, just another driver stopped to browse through the largest gift shop in Montana. Trucker cap pushing down all that hair. Bit heavy set. Looked glad for any excuse to stretch her legs some. You might think she would look a little more powerful, knowing what she pulled off, back at that base. I don’t know _why_ you would think that. You know as well as we do what she does all day, where she goes and what she feeds herself on. My point is, she doesn’t look like someone who could have made so much trouble, like someone who could catch my interest.

I followed her to the largest gift shop in Montana. Followed her inside, watched her watching, then looked around for myself. Dream catchers with a wolf printed on them, pink cowboy hats with silver bangles, toy horse heads on sticks so you can pretend to ride a horse or pretend to carry a decapitated horse head on a stick. Inspirational and funny signs to buy, saying things like “A closed mouth gathers no flint” and “We may not have it all together, but together we have it all”. Cute. This one says, “What happens at Grandma’s never happened.” Um, interesting. What exactly happened at Grandma’s? I think legally you may have to tell someone.

You can buy a knife for five dollars. I bought ten. Never enough knives, when you know how to use them. They’re cheap, sure, but even cheap can cut. I’d dump them all on the floor of the passenger seat, in the car I’m using, have them there, for when they’re useful. I bought ten, because they were cheap, because I enjoy having knives. Next time I change cars, I might leave them there. Property’s not so important, for me. 

What I purchase, I buy with Their money.

But They don’t pay me in money.

That’s something my girl can take heart in, when she’s talking to herself in the cab of that truck. She found Alice’s pay stubs, going back years, right up until she disappeared. She doesn’t know what Alice does, or why she’s gone, or what she was doing when they were together. She doesn’t know how her wife was connected to the world gone mad, but she can take heart in assuming that whatever else, she was probably a real human, because Bay and Kreek paid her like one. 

I’m not hiding. She walked right past me. It goes both ways, yeah. I’m only paying attention because I know who she is, but why would she know about me? If Alice was here, maybe Alice could warn her. But of course, Alice isn’t here. I am.

I let her go. Let her get far, far ahead of me since, uh… where could she get to? Already found her once already. I’d caught her scent, walking past me, way back in Montana, it’s faint, it was enough. They hired me to do a job and- _ah,_ I do love, love my job.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to #vyoria for the tag knife wife.


	2. Arizona

She’s still using her CB.  
They gave me all her recordings when they brought up this job, and I was almost impressed, she wasn’t bogged down in music or podcasts, or her own cell phone- who entertains themself these days? Just driving solo, hours and hours, looking at the country, gathering in little snips from the bloodlines. Taking it all in, processing, and exhaling it out for Alice to think about, or for Thistle to follow, or because she’s got no one left to talk to and so she’s got attached to the sound of her own voice.  


It is a nice voice.  


She hasn’t stopped broadcasting, for all the times she announces she knows better. You still talking to Alice, mm? I guess she doesn’t have any reason to think Alice isn’t listening, at this point. But then, she knows we’re all listening, too…  
She amuses herself throwing her words around. She’s not dying to talk about what she saw under a bridge, she’s “brimming with story.” It was irritating, first, and there are many things I don’t feel, but we do have a high capacity to be irritated. But it grew on me, through the hours of words. It was cute, how willingly and facetiously she opens up her private life for us all. And then it was infectious. My girl’s gotten me feeling poetic.  


She went quiet a long time. All across the dark miles, through the rest stops, and the monuments, and the tourist traps. Between job assignments, chain restaurants, and all I hear is the hum of my engines, following a feeling, a scent that draws me from three states away. Getting bored. Letting the distance wax and wane, making use of useful people, sticking to a single car too long, and then there she is, a single voice. She says she hasn’t stopped talking, even when the CB is off. Says she’s had radio silence since…  


Aha, oh, that’s charming.  


She’s talking about me.


	3. The Last Free Place

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Police Instigator makes first contact with the target. Predator appetites get whetted. Fic name is dropped.

It's been a while.

 

She's never been any good at keeping her head down. A while there she seems to have tried, talking to herself with the radio off, doing her job. When I catch her talking she's finding psychological evaluations for the nation-wide stores, the local advertisements and the things people build within sight of the roads. She's comparing some trivial scare to a memory from when she was younger. Still talking to Alice. Getting her work done.

 

They told me when she started to follow the boss, like I'd need the intel to find her. I could assume the tip was a jab to get me to move faster and get my own work done, but I won't. It's only been a few months, I've got time. 

 

She turned her whole rig around, loaded with whatever merchandise she feels so superior to, and follows the boss, choosing her own route, adding mileage and days to her schedule that Bay and Creek will have to foot the bill for, making her a bad trucker. But I don't think they will fire her.

 

She passed me, doubling back to make trouble. I offered her a smile, polite as ever, and she just stared straight ahead, talking to herself. I wouldn’t get back on her trail until I’d had my fill of the places she’d gone before, those fabled acres of parking lots.  
I’ve noticed how often she talks about spaces. It’s probably one of her most common observations, at least, the ones that get her feeling wordy. Could it be, uh, the spaces upset her? One does get the impression she would have opted to live in a box, if her wife had continued to visit, with food, and you think wow- of all nations to be born to. Just look at her now, though. That’s what they say struggle is all about, right? Growth.

The freeway winds up through suburbia, and I saw the great shopping centers and paved parking spaces she would later describe, deserted as the stores locked their doors without ever shutting off their lights.  
I’ve matured so much, but I still don’t know how anyone could have ever designed their buildings with square miles of uncovered glass. It’s amusing in context, I suppose. I resisted the urge to shuffle around and arrive at a window myself. I stay in the dark. I’m here, when the teenagers come and people the least lit corners, and I teach one or two them the best secrets of being alive.

In Palm Springs I wait for dark, for the traffic to thin just a bit, before I begin to speed. It might be thrilling, but it isn’t. The roads are too straight, too flat. I cover good ground before I hear the siren, good enough that I have time to enjoy myself before climbing into the cruiser. His shirt isn’t the right shape, but the size was close enough. I flick the nametag- bronze, polished- into the dirt on the roadside and replace it with my badge. And I’m ready to meet her.  
It took less time than I thought it would, assembling the pieces of my uniform. As I pass under billboards of ladies in bikinis on jet skis, and peeling signs for live bait and fishing, I find myself stopping to explore. There are no tourists here, enjoying the water, but when they dried up they left their ads behind. 

Something’s wrong with the sand. I dip my hand through it and peer at the irregularly shaped bits and pieces under my feet, and it takes me a while to recognize what I’m looking at.

 

She’s talking about the road, right now. About how it rises and dips over all these little washes, and how it’s making her truck jump around? I hit them myself, soon after. A delightful course, like a roller coaster, rising and falling. I wish they were steeper. I think about cars going too fast, and rising off the pavement over the top of each hump, until they come up too far and slam down hard enough that the tires burst. I wonder how that impact would feel in my teeth and the soft places between my bones. I try to imagine the asphalt biting through the underbelly of my cruiser, stripping it greedily so it thins underneath until it’s clawing at me inside. No one has any problem with the speed I’m driving anymore. No one thinks to challenge a traffic cop for speeding.  
She hits a rest stop, and I drive on, lost in fantasies of wheels and washes, flying out ahead. All around me is open nothingness. Sand with scrubby bushes, all far apart. No animals, no real trees… This is the land the people spread to fill. This is where the rivers are brought to be executed.

I recognize these empty places. I meant that literally, though I suppose it applies on some spiritual level as well. See? Her poetic considerations really are infectious. But I’ve been here before, in person. It’s the last free place, right up ahead. I like it there. There are some really good places, get a bite to eat in Slab City.

I slow and ease off the road to let her catch up. She’s on her radio, no idea I can hear everything she says, no reason to have thought I wasn’t listening, as I creep forward in the failing light. My windows are down and I hear her truck coming, feel the wind of it rock my cruiser as it passes, the might of its engine roaring through my ears, and the force of it, that simple, stupid brutality of matter rushing through space. At once I am driven to distraction- oh if only my hood had been out a few more meters, if she had not passed me but collided-

I swing out onto the road as the sunlight fails, and at long last I am driving close behind her. I can hear the rig, the guttural purring of its massive engine as she guides it so docile through her lane, and I can hear her voice inside my cruiser, coming clear and calm through the radio, treating me to her knowledge of Slab City. I turn on my lights, red and white and violence, and keep pace just a few meters back. 

“I’m keeping back, because there’s only one road in and out of Slab City, and a truck like this stands out on it,” she’s saying, as though stealth has ever been an attribute of hers, “so I have to be careful. _What are those lights?”_  


Aw, that didn’t take long. I had wanted to pace her, see whether she would try and ignore me, hope I was following some other luckless driver, I wish I could say in that moment I had maintained my self control. But I wasn’t ready for her to notice me so quick, and I was still feeling the thrill of so much solid mass hurtling past me, and when I heard her see me and the immediate urgent note in her tone, I jumped the gun and juiced my siren. Just a second, just a truncated beat, but it was enough, and she wasn’t worried she was open and _afraid_ , and there was her breathing, loud and fast and anxious.

I want her to run. I want to hear that massive engine kick into overdrive, hear the squealing of metal as it resists being torn apart. I’m chasing something so big and fast and I only wish it was _faster,_ I want to hear my own engine scream with the effort of keeping up, I want my pulse to race as we find out who’s faster…

Of course she doesn’t run.

Of _course not._

She slows, downshifting, eases off the pavement into the wilderness. I slide in behind her, staring at the rolling rear door of the trailer, reading my employer’s name. Hearing her continue to breathe. She’s _scared._ Smart. Is she scared because she’s met the sort of things that no one talks about, or because she just got caught misbehaving, and thinks she is going to be scolded?  


You know, any other animal finds itself getting chased and it runs faster, or wheels around and fights. I think about this as I get myself better under control, absorbing the cadence of her panicked breathing. I think of how predatory the traffic cop system is, with everyone packed in tight, everyone with their own lanes, and their predetermined speed, and different destinations, and then there’s the lights and the howling and they know there’s trouble coming, they _know_ they’re the prey, and they-

-Stop.

Try to imagine a deer, or a zebra or something trotting along, when a lion falls in behind it, and it stops running and lays down. Nature doesn’t work that way. Domestic things alone can afford to stop and take their scolding from whatever authority is established, because they have traded survival in a hostile environment for a world in which everyone, at least theoretically, is allowed to think they are safe.

I think of dogs, famously standing stoic and well-behaved even under a master’s abuses. How broken is a mind that can implicitly trust the beneficent nature of outside authority even as that authority is directly and deliberately inflicting pain? Do you think a wolf would behave so well? Hah. Unlikely. 

The dog is content when aligned with a benign or loving owner, who selects what shall compromise its diet, where and how it shall be entertained, what places it can sleep, and how it is allowed to behave. It does not consider that it has lost some vital, selfish, survivalist piece of itself, because it has been paid in security. People love their dogs, and dog people will be all to confident that their dogs love them in return.  
Try to offer the same to those people, though. You can’t stand the idea, that you’re being lead around a tamed, sanctioned environment, fed on safe, controlled substances, and allowed to work out some natural behaviors while others are vilified until you believe the ‘discipline’ is just. You think you want to be wolves again, because you are in love with the picture of being independent and fully aware within your own world.

“The cop is sitting there.”

I glance at the radio, carrying her voice. She was nothing, if not domestic, once. So well behaved, so willing to be taken care of, all the way up until she decided she wanted to know things and make choices outside the system.  
“It’s been several minutes, they have not gotten out of the car. Lots of trailers in sight but no people. I think they scattered when they saw the cops. …I would have.”

As good a cue as any. I open my door and slide out. It’s warm, and the sun is down but the sky’s still light.

What happens to the people who decide they aren’t happy to be domestic anymore? Think happiness lay somewhere in a more primal state of nature?

Well, they get what they want, of course. They get to encounter people like me.

 

 

 

In that desert the sound of gravel was loud under my feet as I strode along the edge of the trailer, under Bay & Creek’s towering text. I feel the sun’s warmth still radiating off the metal, creeping through my uniform. The engine’s gone quiet, caught prey now just wanting to minimize its appeal, willing itself to be below notice. I heard her voice in person then, muttering a quick final note into that radio, and she was a good little deer, and had opened the door for me. Is that why she breathed so heavy and anxious? Did she feel the weight of knowing this social contract that required her to open her door to a stranger?

“Hey,” I said, as I arrived, and for the first time, the two of us looked into each other’s eyes knowingly. “Hey.”

She was cramped in her speech, bent over her belly, her shoulders tightened into her. “Hello, officer,” she greeted me, and the fault lines in her were laid bare in that voice, that fragile, frightened, fawning tone. Everything that she had done, had lived through. You would think she would have sounded stronger, and you would have been wrong. “How can I help you?”

“Do you have any idea how fast you were going?”

“Uh, no,” she admitted, which- she’s a professional driver, she ought to know how to play this game. “I-I think I was… well, how fast was I going?”

“I don’t know.” I looked passed her, to the radio speaker, its light on. I’m going to hear myself when I get the recordings. “That’s why I asked.”

She squirmed just a little, because violating speeds limits is a sin. “I had it on cruise control, but it should have been right around the speed limit,” she offered. What a reasonable behavior, to share with a police officer who has pulled you over for speeding.

I tipped my head a degree, seeing her so uncomfortable and defensive and uncertain, and ask a question I knew the answer to from long before. “Like to give up control?”

It’s not the expected, professional exchange she had expected and it jarred her. “I’m sorry?”

“Don’t be,” I said. I meant it. “It’s a common wish. Life is so complicated, anything to make it more simple.”

“I’m not sure what… How can I help you, officer?”

It occurred to me that her fear was all the sharper in not knowing what she needed to be afraid of. Was she speaking to one of Thistle’s enablers? Or was I above that, was I myself a monster? Or was I just a police officer, and in that case, was I a good one? 

Whatever the answer, she was committed to behaving as long as possible, as long as it was feasible we were both part of her old, sensible world and I was just a stranger who would make her stop and wait and answer questions and take away some of her money, and that would be the worst thing that happened in the week. 

“What’s your name?” I ask.

“Keisha.” 

_Keisha._

“Okay, Keisha. No problem. I’ll need your license and registration, please.”

That was normal, that was normal for a cop. Her brows were knit, and I saw the wet flash of her tongue over her lips as she gathered the pages from her glove box and her wallet and slips them into my hands.  
“Okay. I’m gonna run these through the system. Sit tight?” 

There was too much white showing in her eyes, and I saw her throat move as she nodded, I practically felt her crumple as I moved out of sight.

I slid back into my car and flipped through the documents she gave me. I could have stayed there for hours, and she would still be there, waiting, behaving, because I’ve taken away this laminated bit of paper, and because as long as I might be law enforcement, she’s afraid of provoking me.

I had no idea what “the system” was. Only belatedly did I remember a police officer would have asked a trucker for their log book. Sloppy performance on my end, that. While I left her to herself (radio quiet now) I raised her license to my nose and I breathed deeply in, drawing the scents from where it had resided inside her clothing, amalgamating them with what I’d picked up in Montana.

_Keisha…_

They already told me what her name was, of course, I’ve known it from the beginning but… 

I remembered myself and returned to the cab. Keisha watched me coming in her mirror, pushed open the door once more. I looked up at her, sitting up so high and powerful in the control box for this gigantic rig, cowering.

“You can have these back.”

She took the documents, the two of us avoiding skin contact. “Thank you.” I watched her hands move as she put them away. She thought it was ending. 

“Did you have a chance to visit the beach?”

“The… beach?”

A handful of bleached particles hovers in my mind’s eye, shifting and sliding as I tilted my palm, soft calcium crunching where my fingers closed. “Of the Salton Sea back there. It’s the weirdest beach ever, the sand isn’t right. It’s not the right texture, covered in… petrified fish.”

She stared at me, without seeing me, because she didn’t understand if I was dangerous, or commonplace, or why I played like a cop and nothing at all like one. She speaks to me, but it isn’t my question. Her voice speaks of dread and delicious confusion.  
“What is happening right now?”

“And then you look closer at the sand, you know, of the beach, and you realize the sand isn’t sand. It’s fishbone. The beaches are made of fishbone here.”

She saw something in the tightness around my eyes, or the pulse at my neck, some minor disturbance that tied us together, unsettled, and tried to connect.

“Is there a problem, officer?”

I’m still seeing the bones, feeling them hard and delicate against my dry palms, trying to catch the odor of the algal blooms that killed them. It was reminding me of a sensation, a feeling that hadn’t been real in so long, it was something… dead fish bones, dead fish, open round eyes, staring… _watching…_

“I used to have this thing as a kid,” I said, talking through it myself. “I didn’t like uncovered windows. Mostly after dark, but sometimes during the light, too.

“At night, I thought there was something out there _watching me._ Even if just a little sliver of the window wasn’t covered. I’d picture an eye pressed up against it. And then during the day, it was different. I would instead imagine some horrible creature shuffling around the house and they would be arriving at that window soon, and they would see me but worse, I would see _them._ ” Watchers… watching… being watched… things that controlled me, once, made me feel real bad, twisted around to be…  
I refocused, back to Keisha, said, “It’s a childish fear, but as you and I both know, not an unfounded one.”

She wanted the confusion gone, she wanted to be back on the road. She was hung up on the normalcy, back to reciting her lines. “Officer, I… was there a particular reason you pulled me over?”

Fine, Keisha. “You were going fast.”

“I was going over the speed limit?” she prompted.

“I have no idea.” I’ve been told that I’m not trustworthy, that the things I say are suspect. I’ll not argue with you, but I do value honesty in my work, as much as I can. I’ve always found that lying is the tool of people who don’t have control of their situation. “You were going fast,” I explained to Keisha. “Big truck going fast, it’s exciting. Anything that big and fast, you wanna chase it.”

“What department do you work for?” She wanted this encounter to end, and she was beginning to be ready to get confrontational. “Are-are you a state trooper, or…?”

I paused for a moment, and realized I couldn’t recall. “I’d have to check the car, I forgot what it said when I got in.” 

“When you _got in it?”_

“It was dark,” I said, a reasonable reason. The corner of my mouth twitched ever so much and, because I knew how badly she wanted to stick to the topic and get this over with, I added, “I’ve gotten more used to the dark. I’ve grown as a person. I would have thought you’d be proud of me.”

“You aren’t a police officer at all, are you? You’re…” a catch in her breath, a spike in her fear, You’re a weirdo who stole a police car.”

All this and not until this moment could she let go of the hope this was a normal encounter. “Hh, that’s an interesting theory. Here’s my badge.”  
None of us would turn our noses up were a police person to become useful, though not all of us draw on them as often. My co-workers gave me my badge as a joke, a professional gesture of teasing, because of how often my own feeding made such a gratuitous mess. We could feed on whoever we wanted, and the ones I fed on best happened to carry guns.

It’s not personal. It’s the clothing. Those pockets… it’s the fast cars, and the way nobody knows what I am- that the person driving the black and white isn’t another person just like them- but they’re still startled and fearful, and scatter. It’s the idea of being a part of this tame, ordered contract but being the one sort of person still somehow allowed to race and chase and attack.

It’s a cute badge. I don’t know what department it’s molded off, whether it’s parodying ‘officer’ or ‘investigator,’ but we all got a laugh from the department listing of BCPD.  
Keisha stared at it, feeling the lack of weight. ”This doesn’t say any department on it.” Just a little accusing, strengthened with the growing certainty she’s been behaving for a charlatan. “It says you are a… “police instigator”?  
“I could take off both… your arms.”

_“What?”_ She shouted and finally, finally, finally, finally, _finally_ she’d got it.

“With my own hands.” My tone hadn’t changed with the topic. It very seldom does. “No tools, I could take them off. I’ve done it before. It was easier than I thought it would be.”  
Her movement was small, just a roll of one shoulder, flick of her wrist, but all around me I heard the shudder as her cab reanimating- an unexpected, second-thought thrash from a deer that had laid down to be eaten. Prey drive, violent hunger, rose up to meet it in my chest, the effort of staying calm tightening my voice like anger.

“Trying to drive away would be a _mistake, Keisha._ I’m just here to _talk.”_

“What do you want?” She was nearly yelling, but her voice didn’t have the power to cow anyone, let alone something like me, it only made me feel playful.

“You know? It’s been so long since anyone asked that.” The edges of my teeth must have showed in the faintest of smiles. “I was just thinking about it, standing on that beach made of bone. Near town with its cheery 50’s resort signs still up, a woman on water skis in a bikini and now the whole town shrugging its way into the _silt_... What _do_ I want?”

I paused, and just for a second, considered it earnestly. Then I laughed, giving my head a slight shake. “I don’t know what I want!” I’ve been told I’m not especially expressive, whatever I’m feeling, but I know she could hear the smile in my voice. I put my fingertips together, eyes crinkling. “So let’s instead focus on what you want.”

Her throat moved as she swallowed, her shoulders still hunched. She played along. “…What do I want?”

“To be careful. You’ve seen things. We don’t like people, who have seen things. I would say it makes us nervous? But we don’t have the capacity for nerves so more it makes us agitated, It makes us _wild_. Have you ever been _made wild?”_

“I-“

I swiped a hand through the air, briefly gnashed my teeth. I had to cut her off, the emotion in her voice was going to excite me again. “It- doesn’t… matter- that was a rhetorical question or… not a, rhetorical question what’s the word… _Threat._ I’m threatening you!”

“Okay, I…” I saw the change happen in her posture, heard it harden in her voice, new resolve. “Now your turn to listen. I’ve faced fiercer dangers and walked out alive. I’ve seen things that I could never explain, not if I spent a hundred more years talking into this radio.” She flung a hand at the dashboard, at the smug red light on her CB. “You want me scared?” She leaned forward, stared down at me from several feet over my head, and she let out a hot, low, sardonic _hhhhah._ “Officer, you have no idea. I’m _always_ scared. You think fear is new to me, you think _fear_ is the novelty that will change my behavior? For me, fear is _living_. And I’ve lived this long, haven’t I?”

She jutted forward, aggressive, terrified- “I said, _haven’t_ I?”

This was it, then.

This was the sentiment, the sensation, that had impeded Keisha her entire life, that had made her so happy to stay safe and familiar at home, so reliant and needful of Alice. This irrational, nonconstructive, self-sabotaging feeling that would rip through her abdomen and cloud her ability to think.

This was the shape of the war within Keisha, that she tapped in Victorville, that she tore open and fed on until her adrenaline powered her through to a place where she could beat Vector H into mash with her soft, bare hands.  
Keisha doesn’t look like someone who could have caused so much trouble. You’d think she would sound stronger, and you would be wrong. Everything in her manor, her body language, cries out, pleading, _stop scaring me, stop hurting me,_ because she lived in a world where it was safe to assume that the people who heard it were decent, and would respond as she asked, even though that desperate fragility sang like a siren for all the rest of us, called us to chase and catch and bite… And there she was, broadcasting this very vulnerability that was at the core of her strength.

I was left standing, silent, feeling the rise and fall in my chest. My lips were parted slightly, and I moistened them, breathed in even. “I like you,” I admitted. “You’re the most interesting one yet, and I can see why they sent me. They know I love the interesting ones...”

“Who sent you?” She eased back ever so slightly. “The police?”

I couldn’t help it, a snort escaped through my nostrils and the corners of my mouth twitched. “You think the highest it goes is some thugs in blue? You think the _'Thistle men_ ' could live in peace on an air force base because some state troopers are _in on it?_ Police don’t understand. I _feed,_ on the police.”

She leaned forward again, strengthened in her fear, and tempered with the resolve of someone who’s slaughtered their demons before. “Try to feed on me,” she said and if I had to choose the moment I became hers, it would have been then. “You wouldn’t be the first.”

“Feed on you?" A prospect almost amusing, almost endearing, actively exciting. "Oh, we just met.” I closed my teeth and pressed hard, pushing up against the sockets, controlling the desire as it kindled contrary to my words. “We have so much more to through first, Keisha, I take. My time.

“Drive safe now, I’m letting you off with a warning. I’ll be seeing you around, _Keisha_. This is gonna be a good time, I think. Isn’t it so nice, you know, you love your job?”


	4. Mouth of the Wat

Oregon's got the sort of greenery that people say feeds them.  That dense green, you know, comes from everything freezing over and glutting up snow melt every year.

The coastline's interesting.  Sand looks like something off the side of a riverbank, and pine trees right up to the water's edge.  Beaches are structured in stripped, bleached tree trunks.

 

Did you know bald eagles are scavengers?


	5. Abandoned Placed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Instigator gives Keisha and Sylvia some space.

               I’ve been listening to the recordings of her again.  Hours and hours of wistful reflection, peppered with irritations or amusements, and earnest admonitions of love.  They gave me everything when they gave me the job, but I didn’t need to study someone to kill them.

               Now I’ve met her, though, and I realized there’s more to this one.  This car I’m driving, it has a cable that plugs into your phone, so your music comes through the car’s speakers.  Wonderful.  It’s as if Keisha’s telling me stories wherever I go, sharing little tastes of herself, tipping me off to the petty secrets of her private self.  I got to understanding some of the reasons Alice fell in love with her.

               I haven’t been listening to the CB.  I don’t, generally, appreciate feeling tied to things, and it would be so easy to get hooked on the slow drip of waiting for Keisha to break the silence as often as she brims with story.  Other people are hanging on her every broadcast.  I have hours and hours of backup to get through.

               Besides, Keisha’s been showing uncommon self-preservation and kept as low a profile as she could hope, ever since she and that kid got back together. 

               Which.  Not as though we couldn’t find her regardless, as long as she’s following dispatches from us, but even an unremarkable child was able to find her?  Maybe that shook her up, got her to rethink just how bad she needed to talk to all of us.

               When she recounted getting told she “can’t help herself” broadcasting whatever sensitive information she has- oh, I got a kick out of _that._

               Maybe the addiction goes both ways.  Maybe the thrill of thinking Alice heard her opinion really is worth the knowledge that all of Thistle did, too.

               I’ve been treating Keisha and Sylvia to that famous American distance as they dig themselves in deeper.  Feeding on words she said long ago, synthesizing and digesting them into a fuller picture of the person who’d so caught my interest. 

               I used to hate driving.  I’d focus on the road right in front of my face- no sense of direction, no hope of refinding a place because I never saw anything but the asphalt- and I’d think how cars were like these time machines; you get in them at one place, and you emerge in the future, down however many minutes or hours you lost, sitting in a box willing yourself to just get there.  I like to think I’ve matured from that place.  I can be entertained just cruising, knowing someone, somewhere, is there to chase up ahead, seeing the land and what the people have decided to do to it.  There’s no hanging clock ticking over me, these days.

      When I switch cars, when I pick up jobs, I feel the freedom from baggage.  Where I go, I take my job satisfaction, my knowledge of most things, and my time.  Weightless.  No problem.   And all three in abundance.

                “There’s no freedom in uncovering these secrets,” Keisha recounts being told, when I drive in the silence of waiting for her input.  Did she believe it?  Did she believe it, having uncovered a secret that compelled her to slaughter a terrible freedom?

 

                I like learning new things.

               You can know almost everything but you never stop learning new things.

 

               I trail nearer when I'm only going on scent.  On the long, straight highways laid down to connect distant dots, I can come to the top of a rise in the landscape and look down and see her sometimes, way off in the hazy distance, one more faceless commercial load mover in a train of the same, pacing the truckers in front and behind her while the cars in the fast lane tick in and out among them.

               There's that charming, simplifying faith again, little sedans moving with the confidence that the 18 wheelers won't try to hurt them, easy as it could be...  I start to wonder at...

               Reception's spotty on my radio.  Staticked up snatches of some NPR program on, I kid you not, tickling animals to make them laugh.  Little fragments of dialog laboring through, to tell me about play fighting and how laughing means you don't mean it.

               Hmm.

               Maybe I'll think about that the next time I instigate something, and the memory will make me laugh.

 

               Keisha's been trying to do her job, staying on the routes sent from dispatch for the most part, but they stop more often, and longer, for Sylvia's benefit.  Keisha does a lot of reckless stuff when she's just driving herself.  The sort of thing that would irritate, for example, a police officer.  The stuff truckers do so they can finish their jobs in time to make a paycheck.  She does that sort of thing much less when Sylvia's riding with her.

               Long before I reach the turn off into the town where they've left the highway to feed, I know what's waiting to meet them.  It's not a physical sensation, exactly, and while feelings have by and large lost their power to motivate me, I do what I can to stay acutely aware of what my mind and body experience.

               The proximity is like- but not- something moving between the layers of my skin.  Not an itching, not a restlessness.  Like little steel beads, rolling through fluid, separate the layers and bundles and sections of my tissues.  It doesn't hurt, but it can impart something like apprehension.  I don't have the capacity for nerves, but I _don't like_ how it feels when someone who's seen things is talking with _those people._

               I'm not worried- there's another thing we've lost capacity for.  I know how _they_ work.  _They_ like to prod and lead and dither and tangle up the strands; they like to make things change with a minimal show of effort.  Whatever they’re showing my girl, again and again with slight alterations, they’ll let her continue to move forward.  Wouldn’t dream of getting someone in trouble with their boss.

               I lose the shape of the trail in the interim.  No, I never lost _her_ ; there is nowhere she can go in this country I cannot follow.  But she passed into places that she shouldn’t, and out again, and I know this game, I know they’re not doing anything important… but I don’t _know_ , and that’s the source of my agitation.

               Waiting for Keisha to get clear of Praxis I slipped into suburbia, and got up to the sort of things one indulges in when they have an excess of time.


	6. Chain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Our watcher runs a quick side errand and visits the helpful old woman from the police station. While there, she listens to Keisha's account of Leadville, and starts getting a little... excited.

            The food wasn't memorable.

            It's not that I don't think Thistle can't clean up its own leaks, or that I need to do something the get them to look at me more favorably.  It's just part of high job satisfaction, you know, you're so happy to help out for free.

            I found the house early in the work day. It wasn't anything too expansive, but it had the broken-in, lived-in quality that one person imparts over a few decades of being in the same place, generating the resources to improve upon it in steps. The furniture is dark wood, the floors covered in outdated, stained carpeting. I had expected cats.

            There were photos of cats, on the refrigerator. On the bedside dresser.

            She had an enormous plasma TV by the electric fireplace, evidence of recent self-indulgence among the modest-income staples. You hate it when someone has one nice thing.

            Upstairs the bedroom was very small, the bed so old that I imagined I could feel myself sagging down through the mattress to be impaled by the box-spring beneath. I stretched across it, resting, peering up through one eye at the asbestos-laced ceiling,  and played the recording again.

            Keisha's given up and gone home. Keisha's given up and done as she was told, and it wasn't good enough. She'd seen too many things, she had caught the edges of too many secrets, and she wasn't allowed to go back to her safe, tame world. She was a liability. She was a plaything for Thistle.

            So she decides she's going to go kill the monsters all by herself, with a company truck, an herbal extract, and a lifelong mental illness.

            And she _does it._

            I've read the reports of what happened in Victorville. An incredible tragedy; they did not consider it necessary to employ security cameras on a base full of monsters, and so I am deprived the sight of it. But I have Keisha's own words, her incomplete, imperfect remembrance, and I listen through it again as I lie back to rest.

            

            How unfair it all is.

            I picture H, with his smug, confident face, his assurance that all the world has been arranged for his convenience. I don't harbor strong feelings towards Thistle's people one way or another, but I always find enjoyment in seeing someone surprised.

             “' _Oh, you can get out,'”_ Keisha said, and her voice wasn't built to resemble one of them, it drops low and dull, the attempt almost comical. _“'None of us are going to hurt you right away. And you aren’t any safer in there.'”_

            There's a line up to which you can push someone, I've found, before the comfortable complacence of dealing and the consequence of resistance look about the same. Find that line, cross it… you find so many people, with nothing to gain from continuing to comply? Except that they are avoiding the weight of feeling as though they have misbehaved.

            Thistle took Keisha over that line, visiting her at home, playing at being her neighbors. And, honestly? Having met her myself, heard the tremors in her voice, seen the uneasy way she holds herself together, even on high in her massive rig, even under even mundane provocations? I would have guessed she'd stay down. Run, maybe, try to hide…

 _You aren't any safer in there_ , H said. He was talking to her through the door of her rig, but he might have said the same when she had ran home. Go home, lay low, roll over, be good. No safer there than in Victorville, precicely why she's come to start the fight.

            They pushed her to the line where the two options looked about the same, and Keisha surprised us.

 _“I'm always nervous,”_ Keisha says in my ears. She's openly taking advantage of our helpless love of toying and I'm almost proud of her.

            I listen to them go back and forth, can clearly imagine the triumph H must have felt, repeating her own words, his clever revelation we heard everything she said. I lay on this sagging mattress, staring into the lumps of the ceiling, trailing fingertips over the comforter.

            H touched her suddenly, and fast- no one is prepared for that speed- and I feel something stir, somewhere, some faint response to the picture she's weaving. This is the second time he came in contact with Keisha, he shoved her against the solid, uncaring side of her truck, and she tells me she _feels_ it, that immediate, overwhelming panic, and am I ever jealous of that perfect, unadulturated fear.

            Remember that sensation, Keisha…

            I know where this ought to have gone, I've watched enough empty places emptied, but H releases her, hurt, angry, because she's not the easy prey that is all he's ever known, and my mouth twitches, I feel a satisfaction of my own at his surprise, at the subversion of his expectation.

            Anger, something almost akin to embarrassment, because “Thistle men” have inherited a world where they are in their right, and here is this fragile, frightened interloper, come and leveled the playing field: cheated.

            The third time H touches her I imagine the sting of oil against his skin, biting deep and tainting its way through the clotted fat beneath. Painful, upsetting, alien, sharing in Keisha's shock as her world goes white. And my jealously rises again, more powerful, and with it a sort of spite…

            I like to take my time, I like to stretch out assignments and experience new things. I like the little surprises, the minor, minor setbacks or unexpected challenges. There are so many things I have lost the capacity to feel, and so I trawl through work for experiences. I want to feel things that once upon a time, were supposed to be able to kill me. I want to know how it feels…

            And _I_ want to have been the one there that day. I want to feel an old curse piercing my palm as I stare at someone I never expected had any power to hurt me, and I want to see her eyes widen in pain, nerves overloaded from the force of my strike, and feel that same self-confident complacence that leaves me open when Keisha attacks me again.

            I imagine the texture of the heather branch in my mouth, dry and brittle and ripping through soft membranes, its fragrance clogging my senses, mixing with the taste of blood, feel it corroding into my tissues, not like fire, or acid, nothing I could hope to feel as simple damage to my skin, but a personal, vicious attack against all that is _me_.

            I want to feel the raw, primordial panic, so overwhelming and entire- for what could ever be more exciting than fear? -want to feel it overpower my senses until I am oblivious to my strength, to my allies surrounding me, to everything except the torment and the urgent need to escape it, and I flee, and I want to hear her running close behind me as I fight to purge myself of the sensation of being unmade.

            I want to think I've escaped, think I've disgorged, feel my body knitting itself back up, and turn to see her, see she's locked us away, alone, and I want to think I've still won, because what could someone like Keisha ever hope to do to a monster like me?

            In my ears: _“I brought nothing. I brought myself. I'm going to kill you._ ”

_“'Let me explain death to you.'”_

_“I wasn't a person anymore, just a container for my fear,”_ Keisha says. Oh, Keisha. _Remember_ that feeling.

 _“I told my heart,_ beat faster. _I told my panicked breath,_ Become more difficult, _and I told my fear to overtake me.”_

            Yes.

 _“When he hit me, I hit back. He was stronger than I remembered, it was like being hit by a car. Mass without pity, just brutal physics._ ”

            Jealous...

 _“But I was hitting, too, pounding his face, his chest, biting, throwing myself into him._ ”

            I want to feel that uncontrollable, near-infinite energy.

            Hit me. Break me. I'd laugh at her, as she hits me, as she claws the skin of my face until it isn't funny anymore and I flail back, as I grasp that just this once this isn't a game I will win. I want to want to hurt her, not because I'm a monster but because she's hurting me, I want to want to destroy her because I'm truly afraid, and what has ever been as exciting as fear…

            I want to feel my body give out, and my own disbelief as I fall. Want to feel her knees on my chest and her blows rain, and hold it- I want to hold out and feel the moment it's too much and my cells give out and I start to-

            My breathing's gotten heavy. I blink, drawing in a slow, calming breath. Keisha in my ears is breathing radiance, triumphant.

 

            I stare into the poisoned ceiling and she tells me what she was told, winds up her incomplete, deluded perspective, sharing her plans for the days to come. No consideration that H proved we can hear her.

_“Light from the panels as white as bone. White as heat.It’s the height. None of us are used to being this height anymore. It’s the engine, the sound of it, the noise of a truck this size. It’s the height._

_"I love it. I love it so much.”_

            Looking up at her from the side of the road, I think I felt rather the same.

_“What is Bay & Creek? I don’t know yet. Not yet. But I will.”_

            I hope so, Keisha.

_“All I know for now is that this isn’t the end of my story. This isn’t the end of my road trip.”_

            The corner of my mouth curls.

 _Right_ , I thought the first time I listened, before I met her, before I had grasped just how interesting she could be. _Right-_ I had thought- _you hadn't even heard from me, yet._

            I close my eyes and sigh, and try to hold the sensation of my thoughts against my chest, cling to the lingering idea of the skin of her knuckles breaking against my body so brutally that I am breaking under the strain…

            I hear footsteps in the hall. My eyes opened- how unlike me, to be distracted.

            I push up on my elbows, twisting my head so the earbuds fall free, so she looks directly into my eyes when she comes around the corner.

            She freezes, caught wholly and entirely off guard that anyone could have been in this safe, private space of hers. She's older, her face is drawn with confusion and fear, but the lines speak of smiles and kindness, friendly. Definitely not police anymore, if she ever was one.

            I spread out my most reassuring smile as I push up off the bed, and I welcome her home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry to keep everyone waiting. I've been trying to peck at the next chapter but I'm still new to fanfic and sharing smut in particular. Thanks to everyone who's left kudos; if anyone's moved to comment I'd love the feedback and it'll help me stay motivated and get the next chapter out.


	7. Monk of Crystal Springs Part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Instigator gives the Oracle some space. Not because she is afraid of them, of course that isn't it. It's just there are things one isn't benefited to remember. Better to think of the future, anyway, and things one hopes to find there...

                I can remember things from before.  I have an excellent memory for most things I was there for, and knowledge of most things worth knowing.

 

                I remember, once, from before, sitting on the carpet in my bedroom, a resin horse in each hand, making them trot around rags and blocks that were the lakes and pastures of wherever we were playing.  I remember the atmosphere best; strips of harsh yellow burning between the slats of closed blinds, so that the wall to one side was blinding dark and the other illuminated in thin bars.  There was a haze to the air, between the light wanting to wriggle in, the heat of the season, and the dust.  I didn’t want to play outside, where the heat and the dust would be worse, so I sat on the carpet in gradient light, and my horses trotted back and forth, until my mother found me there.

 

 _‘Why are you always playing in the dark?’_ She asked me, entering, crossing the floor in the land-eating strides of adults. 

                I put down my horses, spine straightening; I started to tell her to wait, to leave down the blind down, that there could be something-

                The blind came up, the light came in.  The dust danced, lit up, clearer now, and outside the glass I saw---

 

 

                I’m at a motel, now.  Sitting back on the roof of my camper, looking up at the wall.  I’ve lost track of Keisha, that is to say, I’ve let Keisha run ahead of me for now.  She’d still be driving, at this hour, girl always pushes herself too hard, always so focused on getting wherever they send her, when she isn’t off course to pick little fights.

 

                I don’t have to cool my heals when she does.  It’s hardly fair, I know, that she needs to sleep as well as feed when I don’t.  So I let her spool out ahead of me, give her room to run.

                Am I doing it as a favor to her, or to feel the job satisfaction of having played fair when it all comes to a close?

                Or is it something else this time around, that whiff of...

                ...limnal spaces, time....

                Keisha sleeps in her truck, most of the time, and when she does sleep at one of these places, she keeps her blinds down.  She can’t really hide the Bay & Creek eighteen-wheelers in a motel parking lot, but she can impose some little secrecy as to in which room she lets her guard down. 

 

                Good for her.

                Out here, in the dark, I look through the windows of patrons who have not done the same.  I don’t intend to interact with any of these people, and I don't need to.  Just watching is in my job description.

                ---nothing.  Years ago, from before.  Outside my bedroom, through the window laid bare, I saw the field, and the dirt driveway.  I saw a clear sky and grass bent by light wind.  Just our yard, and out beyond that, houses, and farther out, hills.

                Nothing shambling closer to press its eye to the glass.

                Nothing sitting on its car and watching me go about my day.

                In sunlight, looking at the harmless outside, I might have appreciated my mother coming to throw open the proverbial closet, and show me no monsters inside. 

                I might feel hypocritical, watching when I have always been uncomfortable being watched, if I still had capacity to feel much of anything.

 

                I'm not _avoiding_ them, if that's what you think.  I'm not one of Thistle's goons, all arrogant assurance and lumbering brutality, I _think_ , and I adapt, and I have the time and permission to get my work done however I find most satisfying.

 

                I'm not afraid of their time.  I'm not avoiding their liminal spaces.

                And, if I truly _wanted_ to tail Keisha into their little hiccups of warped reality, I'm certain I could.

                The garlic in Gilroy blasted Keisha's sense of smell to nothing, and I agree, it was strong stuff, but nothing could cut me off from the scent of _her._

 

                There’s no subtlety to Thistle, and that’s kind of the point.  Everyone thinks about the lurking serial killer, preying on night joggers and lost children, breaking into houses, or waiting on the side of the road.  Everyone goes through life and, here and there, glancing at the scruffed-up man outside the Walmart, or the young adult with the haunted eyes, and thinks about the possibilities.  It’s the fact that they can look so near to normal, that scares them.  That romanticized, glorified monster of cinema, the brilliant, cunning creeper, the wolf in sheep’s clothing.

                People can believe that one of their own is dangerous, and that such malicious people would exist and slip through the safety net.  They hear about them all the time, see them on the news, read about them in their books.  Such people are most successful when they are best able to disguise themselves, because the system hunts them even as they hunt, because a public, once roused, will not tolerate their presence. 

                Thistle’s people do not disguise themselves.  They’re too powerful, too dangerous to fear the little humans they are allowed to abuse, sure, but more than that, their idle transgressions against humanity are not only tolerated but sanctioned by the highest courts in the land.  Something that openly hostile, something with that level of brute strength, lumbering out in daylight, into buildings, diners, shoving women against their vehicles, sedating with a simple touch, taking windpipes in their hands, feeding chunks of living flesh into their mouths in actions that are nothing that must be done in order to survive, but are merely a demonstration.

Flat movements and nothing demeanors. 

                I share that sanctioned immunity, but where Thistle and the powers that be maintain a professional courtesy, my own unremarkable presentation allows me to abuse the system several levels higher.

 

                _Police Instigator, B &CPD_, it says on my badge.

 

                Watchers don’t have the obvious little telltale signs of being monstrous, because we all had something before that, something softer and more sensitive, before we settled in to watch, before they recruited our violent hunger.  I have speed and strength more than worthy of my line of work, but I don’t inspire fear with a passing glance.  I’m scarcely north of normal.  I am deceptively small.

                People don’t know why they cooperate with me, when I look them in the face, when I take them by the hand and draw them quietly out of sight to feed.  It seems like sedation, the absolute acquiescence that my appearance and demeanor inspires- surely it must be manipulation of a telepathic order that could make someone so biddable to one such as myself.  It isn’t.

                It’s the modern human insistence of a reality in which other humans are safe, in which rudeness is unacceptable.  A haphazard uniform, a confident demeanor, it’s all that they need to obey you.

                It’s talent.

                For every hundred such easily handled humans there will be the stray wild one, those contradicting individuals that work their way past my reassuring façade, and for those special cases, I have my speed and strength.

                I don't have supernatural sedation. I don't need it, do I? Thistle doesn't need it, either, but they get it in spades- all the better to throw their weight around. I'd say that isn't the kind of person you _really_ need to be afraid of, but hah, wouldn't that be a laugh? Tell that one to Sylvia's mama.

                Those… people… in the rest stops, are as conspicuous with their abilities as well. It's nothing worth being scared of, of course- just speed and strength, and something uncanny, and… recalling things from before, sometimes… Little chunks of jetsam from the time stream. Little things not worth dealing with if you can help it, the mild irritation of being complacent in one's powers of observation, one's inhuman strength, one's impossible speed, and being reminded that you're not the only one.

                There was never that monster, in the proverbial closet. Just the tree, the road, dust in the air. Just a kid and her resin horses, and a parent with the best intentions, and a flawed and hopeful idea of how the world was.

                All the time waiting, watching for something to come in from _out_ side.

                Can you imagine it, though? All the brutality, physical power, and lack of reservation to hurt another sentient being- which is worth quite a lot, all on its own- and you could _still_ simply lay hands on someone, and have them under your spell. I suppose I haven't thought much on that before. It's been a long time since anyone's asked me what _I_ want. It's entirely unnecessary, of course- a uniform, an authoritative demeanor, a swift, light cuff to the base of the skull should the prior tools fail- and I get whatever I was wanting.

                I climb into the driver's seat and hear the engine cough to life, feel the RV mutter itself to attention under me, and put some distance between myself and the people behind the glass. The world around me darkens as I move away from the motel, just the twin cones of my headlights, the little beads of icons on the dashboard. I feel myself take up the trail almost unconsciously, closing the distance meter by meter with a near involuntary draw.

                I haven't thought much on it, before.

                Perhaps it's been too long since someone was interesting enough, to want them awake and aware and sedate, when we met.

                A small, innocuous interaction.

                Just talking.

 

                Or…

 

                I've seen her, when she hasn't seen me, so many times at this point. So many little instances where I was alert, right there, not even hiding, and there she was, on edge perhaps, but blissful in her imagined solitude. Keisha's tense, even when she's feeling relatively safe.

                There are so many times I could have taken her, out isolated on the road, or right there in front of anyone, and she doesn't even know.

                So why not? What _exactly_ is holding me in check all these times?

                A reluctance to rush things, certainly. The sooner I act, the sooner this is over, and things fall back to the same predictable pattern as ever. Isn't that why they asked _me_ to do this? They know how I love the interesting ones.

                But it's something else, I realize now, here in the dark, fallen back off Keisha's trail and indulging myself in these thoughts. I realize- and here I am, surprising myself- that a part of me doesn't _want_ to see Keisha's fragile security shatter at the sight of me, when I catch her off her guard. This sensation isn't new, but it's different all the same. Different from what I might have felt, when I had the capacity for-

 

                Liminal space and time and memories from before, people fast and strong and with the effrontery to watch us back. I remember why I've let us get so far apart. Light, animal frustration flickers in my abdomen, and it seems I'm truly off my game tonight, as I feel myself slowing on a country road, and looking down, see the fuel light, and listen to the engine fade.  I glide forward a while, silent, acutely aware of the distance between us, until I let the right tires bump over the desolate shoulder and grind my RV to a halt.

 

 

 

vOkay.

 

                No problem.

                My lights hold over the empty plain, lighting dust and dirt that drifts ahead.

                I press my shoulders into the seat, eyes drifting closed.

                Above and out of sight the stars spill out like salt on black velvet, a cold and static, distant scape, and below it little people in their little cars, creeping along the veins of a country, and me, left isolated, stagnating just here, patient, frustrated. Calm.

 

                I am so, so _hungry_.

 

                I see Keisha, paused out in the middle of nowhere, inexplicably vulnerable and all alone in the inhospitable wilds. Badwater all over again, and the thought of it worries an ache in my belly, something that, had I retained the capacity, may have stung like regret. The watching had been so, so satisfying then, just seeing her and knowing- _knowing-_ how easily and with such little fuss I could have taken her right there.

                Whatever _could_ I have been waiting for? It strikes me unthinkable, that I should ever have been so content, where now I am so deadly hungry, just remembering her there, alone in the dirt, with her rig idling nearby. Have I truly been made so complacent?

                I see her now, I indulge myself in the ideal, that a second chance is here, that once again Keisha sets out so irresistible an invitation. Just the two of us, under the velvet-salt sky, and her idling rig, and the wastes.

                And she doesn't hear me- _why_ wouldn't she be waiting? How has she not learned, by this point, that there is no place on the whole of this planet where we are not watching, where we are not listening?- but she isn't listening for me, and this time I would not be sated to watch and feel the low buzz of confidence, this time is _the_ time, and I stretch out my hand-

_You like to give up control?_

                -and I imagine my fingers coming to rest on her arm, the intake of breath, the flush of gooseflesh, and then just… calm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Everyone gets thirsty driving through the desert, right


	8. Monk of Crystal Springs Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You get so used to all your interactions with people being based on fear, you never consider how things might go if that wasn't part of the dynamic.

      There would be no scream, as she turns her eyes to meet mine, no struggle, no sprint of anxiety. She does not reel back from my touch, scrabbling for those bold, empty threats that have so whetted my fascination.

      Imagine such a meeting, between two such as us. Awake and aware, and sedate.

      Keisha's face is prematurely marked by the creases of worry. There are thin lines about her mouth, and the eyes she turns on me are hollow, looking at me.... seeing _me_.

      And she does not reel back in panicked revulsion, and I do not feel my insides twist with the displeasure of being watched. There comes a dryness to my mouth, and a vast, empty absence in my core.

      Do you know, I can't remember the last time someone asked me what I wanted?

      I imagine, just imagine, just picture in the secrecy of my own head, I indulge- imagine Keisha's own hand lifting up, I see the pink of her palm as her fingertips reach and she lets them graze over the size of my face, hook on the back of my head to slide through my hair. I lock up entirely, my breathing pausing at this touch as I experience a sensation I thought I had lost.

      I'm still looking into Keisha's eyes, wide and dark, paradoxical for their fear and strength, but there is no fear in them now.

      My lips drift apart. I want to say her name, want to enunciate it low in my mouth, but my throat is unresponsive and I can only stare, a tight prickle running along the back of my arms. I grasp at that feeling, wanting it to last, I want to feel what you feel when-

      Suddenly I can move, my hands are on her upper arms and I push her back into the side up the rig. Not forcefully- for once, just once, it's not violence, just hunger, she isn't afraid, and I don't want her afraid. I want to feed on her, I want to watch her feel...

      The eighteen wheeler idles, its grumbling a low undercurrent to my pulse, vibrations passing through Keisha's body up my wrists as I run hands down her sides to her hips. She shivers, spine curving, fingers tightening in my scalp. I have to rise up on my toes to reach her; hot breath swirls between us, and I graze my lips over the soft skin of her jawline.

      "Try to feed on me," Keisha whispers. "You wouldn't be the first..."

      I turn into her mouth, hands gripping, pulling her body against me as I press forward, her shoulders still solidly against the beat of the truck. When I exhale, Keisha's tongue slides into my mouth. It brushes mine, probes over the cusps of my teeth, finding them flat and human as her own.

      My hand is at the base of her neck, it quests upward and tangles in her impossibly soft curls. Her scent intoxicates me and I want out skins together, I want to feel every breath and shudder, want to watch as she experiences everything, _everything_ I have lost capacity to...

      I pull back from her kisses, gasping- I’m losing myself in her touch and her scent and there is so much we have to get through before this could be over; I touch the hot metal side of the rig, follow it, reach high and find the handle of the door. Keisha looks at me, eyes lidded, pupils wide and catching the starlight. It takes an act of will to release my grip on the back of her neck and for a moment I draw back.

      She moves sideways, holding eye contact, and climbs into the cab. The engine is loud underneath her, looking down on me once again. Keisha inhales to steady herself; she holds my eyes and with a careful deliberateness her fingers move to the collar of her flannel; she bites down softly on her lip as the as the buttons come open and cloth slips aside, exposing her skin.

      My lungs empty in a hiss, desire flaring to fierce as to hurt. Keisha smiles- smiles at me, down at me, low before her, a low creature… Characteristic terror haunts the edges of her eyes, but something else- is it triumph? Defiance? – and I am _made wild._

      She scoots back on her elbows as I scramble into the cab. I fall upon her throat, kissing hard into the pound of her pulse. My lips peel back, teeth grazing hungrily down toward her clavicle, wanting, needing her in my mouth, needing the flavor of her drowning my senses in terrible freedom. She wasn’t ready for my speed and I feel her body lock up under me, hear her gasp, but I’ll not hold that against her; I know I can be a bit much. Instead I force myself to calm down, just a bit; I muscle down this hunger a few minutes more, and pull away to suck in air, shrugging out of my jacket. It only takes seconds for Keisha to relax, and I’m back at her throat, more controlled. It's dark in the cab, our bodies lit only by moonlight and the faint light of icons on the dash (and perhaps the red light of a radio?) as I hook my fingers in her waistband and tug sharply down.

      Immediately the scent is stronger, overwhelming, but she's taken my face in her hands and pulled me into another kiss. I hear myself growl, hear the desire and hunger and the absence of what nuance I once felt so freely.

      I set a hand on her thigh, my thumb slides over her, and her breath catches.

      I want to feel this. I want to feel all of it, and I cannot- it hurts. and even in this moment I know it and _that. Hurts_ , but Keisha can, and I want her to feel everything.

      My hand is working over her vulva, pressing and stroking the folds of skin, finding heat and wetness as my thumb strokes down one side, then the other, until her breathing's gone so ragged she pulls out of my kiss to pant. My mouth moves to her jawline again, I flick my tongue against her jugular on my way down her body, her breasts, along her ribs, against her stomach.

      Anything, anywhere, anyone else I could have held myself back, I’m sure, could have taken my time, really made this last, but this is too much, and I pull away from her; as I reposition, kneeling in the passenger’s foot well, she opens her legs for me.

      Several seconds I make myself wait, close my eyes and recapture my desires. I feel the want curving in my spine, I can feel it in my abdomen, in my nipples and of course, hot and so tight as to hurt in my groin. I cup my hands over her legs, lean in, and drink in the scent; I come in with such care as to seem tentative as my mouth ghosts over her inner thigh.

      She picks up on my caution, and her fingertips descend lightly upon the top of my head. Her touch is gentle, reassuring, so I sigh against her skin as the first involuntary shudder rips free down my spine. Is it _possible_ , that Keisha could be reassuring _me?_ The novelty draws up something primal, some inarticulate impulse to showcase just how ludicrous such a sentiment would be, but I cannot get behind it, because at the same time, something much quieter, something more vulnerable, is responding, and it has been so long since I’ve been made to feel reassured.

      I open my eyes to see her watching me. Her fingertips curve down behind my ear, and I remember what brutal physics she has brought into being with those same hands, what impossible acts of power Keisha is capable of. I’ve identified as a low creature a long time, but I’ve never felt so low as just now, breathless and overwhelmed on my knees. Keisha holds that faint defiance, that ever-present specter of anxiety, and gentle warmth, a humor, a set to her eyes that evokes her tone when she speaks of minor quirks of this country that manage to amuse.

       Looking up at her, breathing in her scent- she smells so _good_ and I am so _hungry_ \- feeling her hand possessive and affirming at my scalp. I hear her words again in my mind- a challenge, or an invitation, and I lean forward and press my mouth against her.

      My fervor is enough that it isn’t long at all before Keisha’s breath hitches and she begins to move against me. Her feedback is feeding me in ways I haven’t explored in so long I can barely remember; the noises she makes, the sounds, scents, textures and tastes of her body animating me, I want this to feel good, I want her to feel amazing.

      I must be doing well because- Oh I am so. So good at my job- Keisha loses herself in it; she moans out openly as we draw near to the end, she gasps, raking bitten nails over my scalp, she’s lose everything but the pleasure, back arching, thighs pulling in close, and she cries out, “Alice! Oh, _Alice!_ ”

      I turn my face aside, panting, feeling her trembling against my palms. My tongue runs over my lips and I swallow, working to catch my breath. As Keisha comes down I rest my cheek against her thigh, eyes sliding shut. My fingers curl idly along the edge of her stomach, and her hand slides along to cover them.

 

 

 

Three thumps, heavy and hollow.

      I lift my head, and see the empty shoulder of the road, smogged starry skies, the dashboard of the RV. Light shines harsh, through the side window, and headlights against the mirrors. I blink, lick my lips, and return my breathing to normal.

      To my left, through the glass, a state patrolman stands, little flashlight, hat so iconic it’s a parody of itself.

      “Ma’am?” He’s concerned, but also stern. First priority welfare, close second, bureaucratic enforcement. “Ma’am, you alright?”

      My mind is still on Keisha’s flesh as I smile for him, wistful, but satisfied all the same.

      We have to take what we can get, in this life. The patrolman is telling me I can’t park an RV just anywhere to sleep, but I’m still distracted. His voice picks up, in speed, volume, as I open the door and let myself out into the refreshing desert night. It seems I’ve gone and stirred up a farcical new appetite in my idleness… What to do but get back to work, and in the meantime sate it best I can by indulging the usual one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the chapter that really had me wanting to write this fic, way back last year when I first heard Season 2. I'm not sure what to say but that it turned out very different from the dubious, predatory fantasy I'd been expecting, but that's writing for you.


	9. Absent Family

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The instigator is indulging in a little self care when she hears that Keisha is back at the old farm.  
> Content warning for semigraphic violence early in this chapter.

      A few seconds’ search of the RV’s kitchen offered me what I was looking for, and I went back out into the hazy headlights, where the patrolman was crumpled, and turned him over on his stomach.

      His badge says Officer Nicholas Holdt. He was taller than me but, not too heavy, fit but, not built. Is it because he is one of the _good cops_ , who got into the blue to keep things peaceful, or is it because he’s one of the _bad cops_ , and is using his badge to bully people in ways his body and charisma alone could not have accomplished? It doesn’t really matter. We’ll never know.

      He moaned as I turned him over on his stomach but he didn’t fight me, because I’d hit him hard enough to be foggy, because I’m in uniform and so confident and he isn’t sure if he’s done something to deserve this.

      “Shhh, Nick,” I said. “This is… well, ahah, I guess this might take a while, after all.” The knife comes out of his kidney black in the harsh night, blood sets to soaking through fabric at once. He screams, breaking through to the animal preservation instinct, but I’ve got my knee on the back of his neck and I’m taking my time.

      I’m still thinking of Keisha as I run the spine of the knife between my lips, sampling that tumultuous, living flavor. It’s such bad form, you know, to think of somebody else while you’re being intimate with someone? It’s all back to that social nature, that animal-brain hardwiring, compelling people to do things for no real reason, except that it’s what they think is correct, or is closer to goodness. So much energy and stress over brainwaves no one will ever hear.

      Officer Holdt’s energy is visibly waning as he writhes in the dirt, making mewling sounds and mud. He asks me who I am, what I’m doing, why I’m doing it. Typical things, nothing _interesting_. His gun smoke trickles up through the dust of the headlight from where I’d slapped it out of his hand. Two shots before I was close enough. One of them even hit me, a trivial gouge to the side, that has me dripping on him as I work. He stops resisting and begs, offers me items, but I’m methodic. I need to get back into acting professional. I have to time out to take care of myself, every now and again.

      The kitchen knife has dulled, scraping rib and gristle too many times, but continues to plunge in with adequate force, when I hear the beep of command calling. The sky’s gone grey, Nick’s finished talking to me but he’s still managing to breathe. I suck the blood from my fingertips and tuck a few stray hairs behind my ear before getting my phone out. I roll my tongue over my front teeth, clearing away the red, and answer the call.

      “Yeah.”

      Lucy’s annoyed. Lucy’s been trying to contact me for half an hour.

      “I was, uhmmm… busy,” I answer, sounding distracted and dreamy.

      She’s not pleased. My eyes stray down and find Holdt watching me. My lip curls and I plant a boot on his jaw, forcing his skull back. Pink froth dribbles down from his mouth. His arms have lost the strength to grab at me, but at his sides his fingers splay.

      I put the knife back to my lips and kiss another taste from it, the fresh freedom of it singing through my mouth, when Lucy tells me where Keisha’s gone.

      I almost cut myself, eyes popping open. “Oh, now _that’s_ interesting,” I say, near-contentment of the previous moment transmuting at once into prey-drive.

      “Go there, find what she’s looking for, and _apprehend her_ ,” my boss says. She’s civil, she’s just, politely emphasizing her desires. She’s doesn’t snap, she’d never snarl at _me_ , but I imagine were I… ah… say someone less important, say, _Alice_ , maybe, Lucy would be expressing herself more openly.

      The call ends. I go open the side door of Holdt’s cruiser, come back to wrap my arms around his torso, and drag him into the passenger seat. The RV, the knife, the handgun, the crimson-soaked ground I leave behind, no use to me.

      In the RV’s kitchenette I clean up my hands, wipe my face and button my police jacket over my shirt, concealing the worst of the bloodstains. Holdt’s tan highway patrolman uniform isn’t in my size, and I’ve always preferred the blues. There will be time, later, to outfit myself in something new. Settling the police cap over my head, I give my mostly unremarkable appearance a quick going-over with my eyes, and we’re ready to go. Holdt slumps, breath rattling, as I take my seat behind the wheel, as I take a leisurely few seconds to adjust the mirrors and click the seatbelt home. We back away from the RV and turn out onto the highway, with a flicker of anticipation I switch on our siren. We’ve got a ways to go, and we’re, going to have to rush it a bit.

 

 

      She'd tucked the rig away, partially hidden behind the tumble-down hull of a barn. I slow as I pass it. I know she isn't there, I always know exactly where Keisha is, but I'm fascinated by the sight of the semi abandoned. It isn't the first time I've seen it dead and driverless; I've indulged in looking it over before, outside of rest stops and motels. The corner of my mouth twitches and I almost laugh to the benefit of the monolith- what was she _thinking_ , cutting herself off from even the idea of high power and strength?

      I let a tacky fingertip trail the side, craning my head back to peer into the empty window, feeling something like fondness, the inanimate connection to an object that has brought enjoyment. It's been real fun chasing you.

      I see the lights in the old farmhouse long before the turnoff to the driveway. Something not entirely pleasant courses the length of my backbone and I catch myself leaning over the wheel, speeding up, loud over the uneven gravel. It's been weeks since I've been close enough and the payoff does not disappoint. I can feel the anticipation like knifes under my skin, a muscle that twitches in my jaw. I only just keep myself still, rounding the last bend, loud, and my headlights rise up and strike the uncovered picture window- hah, ah, oh childhood- and _there_ she is.

      I see how her whole body shifts when she hears me, see her leap up and rush to face the window, go rigid staring into the night at the sleek, rumbling police car. See how she locks up, rabbit-in-the-headlights, mind spinning out in panic, just stuck _staring_ at me. There's so much I might have done different here, might have slipped up quiet, made a proper game of it, but there she is, here we are at last and I'm already shutting the headlights off, opening the door.

      The cab light comes on and what a sight that must greet her- me, radiant, unfolding from the cab and oh that's right, there's Holdt still with us, physically speaking, bled out and glued up onto the seat, head slumped on one shoulder, vacant eyes, a ghastly joke, a parody- _you're trespassing Keisha, someone's called the cops on you...!_

      "Keeeeeeisha!" Her name spools out sweet and lively from my mouth. "Keisha, you in there?"

      I slump forward, palms on the hood; the door shuts blacking out the interior, it's all us now. Pent-up energy is making me giddy. I laughing and playful, I can't help it, I'm in such a good mood...! "I mean, I know you are, so I guess that was a dumb question. My bad! I followed you here."

      I straighten, strike my hands clean in three quick slaps. "You're very easy to follow." I make eye contact, raising a knowing finger to tap the end of my nose. "I can smell you. I can smell you from three states away. ...You smell really good." Understatement. "So I guess, uh..." I glance into the dark windshield, back at the house, "take that as a compliment. Okay, I'm gonna come in now!"

      Keisha vanishes from the window and doesn't even lock the door before she flees to the back of the house; it wouldn't have helped her, but she's a dear to go making things so convenient for me all the same. I step in, breathe in the dead air, the dust, breathe her in and sigh.

      I can hear her footsteps, frantic, scrambling through the back rooms. I can't fairly blame Keisha panicking, a more level head would reveal just as little here to help her. "Why are you poking around this place again?" I didn't keep the capacity for happiness as I remembered it from before, but I hear something similar in my voice as I move so patiently forward. "Is there something here for us to find?" I give the sofa a perfunctory push, feet scratching into the old hardwood. "You don't need to answer that. If there's something to find, we'll find it. When faced with a problem, tear at it." I glance up the old staircase as I pass. "We keep tearing and tearing and tearing until eventually, everything gives."

      I hear her at the back window, smell the night air passing through it. "Keisha! It's _okay_ ," I croon. "This doesn't have to be difficult. It's time now."

      I see her then, right as she breaks free through the window, she's gone and scraped herself all up on the glass, blood in the air, already fighting to get back on her feet, framed in the square of electric light. She looks good. Real good.

      "Hey, listen," I say now, and my voice is so calm, no rush, no urgency here. "I have a job to do, now, so... here we go."

      She wasn't ready. Of course she wasn't, I'm a very private person, no one's business how fast I can move, when I want; I'm at the window and I reach out and yes, my fingers close over her arm, first touch, feel my hand biting into her skin, skin I've thought on through so many miles, and almost as fast, almost as sudden Keisha's twisted her shoulders and drives something against my chest.

      It bites through the fabric, turns to come sawing under my ribs, I hear it lance through and my diaphragm collapses, air rising out through my mouth in a rare, surprised sigh.

      Keisha hurt me.

      She reels back and drags her arm free of my hand; it's not pain, naturally not, but the experience, the idea of Keisha- I confess I had not been expecting that.

      I make a soft, distracted, _mmmm_ as I swing back, catching the sill for balance, and Keisha vanishes from the light of the window, sprinting around the house.

      I look down and brush fingers over the outter edge of the glass shard sticking out of my chest; breath hitches, gurgles, and I cough once, dusty black motes escaping my mouth.

      Keisha's footsteps crunching around the edge of the house, I shake my head, aggression feeding into me from the rupture in my lung, my teeth set and I launch out through the window, the impact of each footfall churning foam into my mouth. My body does not want to run; my body has been damaged; I feel blood starting to soak down my stomach, out between my teeth. I'm not angry yet, if I'm only now finally paying attention, I round the house and see- oh, of course- she's run and thrown herself into the copcar. I see her, throwing herself into the driver's seat besides the corpse before the door slams, hear the engine gun to life. And that's wrong, the challenge is welcome but that was _my_ mistake, my oversight, leaving the keys-

      No, no, no, _fuck_ -

      Too late do I start to actually sprint, feel my lung flagging and failing to support me, I just have to _focus_ , just push through it, she's already backed around, I'm almost in reach of the back bumper when she guns it, engine squealing. Everything else fades as I throw everything I am into chasing, froth choking up through my throat, and several seconds I'm as fast, several seconds and I'm faster, gaining, until the gear catches and she speeds out ahead of me, out of reach.

      I slowed as the light slid away from me, left me hidden in the darkened yard. This is unsustainable.

      I came to a stop, staring after the taillights. I twitch and spit a gobbet of bubbly dark fluid, and finally look down at the wound. I feel the weakness in my body, feel how it wants to collapse, or spasm into choking coughs. My limbs, still strong because I willed them such, trembling with unspent excitement.

      I pin the protruding glass between the heels of my hands and feel the jagged shard shiver and catch as it slides out, slippery, all painted black. Pressure eased, liquid seeping ungoverned into my lung. I look at the shard in my hand, cough softly, look back to where the headlights have found the main road.

      I feel... cheated, somehow.  Something violated that I had not realized I expected to be there.

      It's worse than the damage in my body, than the unspent energy jolting through me, yeah... an odd sensation, a rare one, for me.

      I let the glass fall to the dust road, take off my hat and run my hand through my hair, exhaling.

      Okay.

      No problem.

      I've been unprofessional. Mixing too much pleasure with business, getting distracted, loosing focus.

      Okay.

      Alright, Lucy, I get it. It's about time to start taking this seriously.


End file.
